GodWithWings
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Ch 36 - Which God Do You Serve?
🕑 Added 2025-06-06 20:18:28 +0000 UTCThe room was dark, the air heavier than before. A narrow corridor dimly lit by torches stretched ahead, turning sharply to the right after just a few steps. Unlike the last chamber, which had been damp and veiled in mist, this one suffocated in a different way. The stench of waste and rotting filth clung to everything, thick enough to taste.
I nearly turned back.
The urge to return to the circular hall overwhelmed me immediately, but then I heard footsteps. Slow at first, but growing closer. I shifted my stance and raised the blade, tightening my grip without a word.
The footsteps grew closer, quick but uneven, their impact too soft to carry any weight. There was no pressure behind them, nothing that signaled danger, but I kept my stance firm regardless. If this dungeon had managed to conjure the image of the Goddess, it could just as easily play tricks on my hearing.
Then she appeared.
A woman, barefoot, dressed in a long black dress etched with faint red markings that glowed softly in the dark. She moved without direction, stumbling forward with both hands extended, bumping into the wall more than once as she tried to stay upright. Her hair was long, dark, clinging to her back in greasy strands that swayed with each clumsy step.
“Please… are you there?” she called out, her head turned toward me though her eyes remained shut. “Pl-please… say something if you’re here…”
Her voice cracked as she spoke, the words unstable, too tangled with emotion to land cleanly.
“Don’t come any closer,” I ordered, readying the blade to strike her if she entered my range. She looked harmless, but that meant nothing.
The moment I spoke, she stopped.
Her body stiffened. A slight tremble passed through her legs, and tears welled at the corners of her eyes. She stood just a few paces away now, and in the dim light, I could see her face more clearly. Her eyes had been stitched shut. Her skin was caked in dirt. Even with the faint traces of a once-refined face beneath the grime, she had none of the presence she might’ve once carried. Of everyone I’d encountered in this world, she ranked only above the two malformed creatures I’d put down earlier.
“Please don’t leave,” she cried as I took a step back. There was no aggression in her voice, only panic. “I’ve been here for almost a month now. Or more. I’m not sure. Not less than that, definitely. I lived outside the forest, in a small village with my parents. We grew wheat, made our own drinks. Our alcohol is well-known…”
Her words kept spilling, jumping from thought to thought without structure. She never finished a sentence before leaping to the next. I stopped listening after the third or fourth half-formed story, but buried in the mess was one detail that stuck - she’d been trapped in this room for over a month.
If that was true, I needed to leave immediately.
I didn’t turn my back on her.
Blind or not, I wasn’t that stupid. I stepped backward with care, the tip of my sword still aimed at her chest. The moment my foot landed, making the slightest sound, she moved.
“Don’t leave me, please!” she screamed, throwing herself toward me with sudden force.
She ran straight at me, fast but uncoordinated, crashing into the stone walls with every few steps and still trying to keep pace.
Should I kill her?
Even if she seemed harmless at first glance, I knew better than to trust appearances. But while I debated what to do, she stepped so close to the blade that a single misstep would have driven her onto it without any effort on my part.
My eyes widened as I realized just how close she was. One more step and the blade would pierce her chest.
She was only inches away when I stepped aside and let her stumble forward, watching as she crushed into the stone wall again.
“Ouch... why didn’t you stop me?” she muttered with a childish pout, rubbing her forehead like I’d wronged her somehow.
I ignored the question and turned toward the exit.
I’ll let her talk first. If anything feels off, I can deal with her then. At the very least, she might tell me something useful about the world outside the forest.
Window only revealed what was inside the forest. Everything beyond the treeline remained obscured, unreachable through divine sight. But if this girl truly came from one of the villages beyond, then she carried knowledge I couldn’t afford to ignore.
“Come with me. I’ll take you outside,” I told her, nudging her in the right direction. I wasn’t about to treat her like some lost friend in need, as everything about her felt off.
We left the chamber, and I led her straight toward the pool. The stench clinging to her was unbearable, thick as the air from the chamber she'd been trapped in. I had no desire to travel with someone who smelled worse than a troll’s breath.
“Oh, this is so nice,” she said, immediately picking up on the shift in the air. “Our village has a place just like this - hot water rising straight from the ground. It smells like rotten eggs though. My friend Emma always joked that our hot springs were the only reason no one ever bothered attacking us. I love spring, but I love winter more. Did you know Halvyns only reproduce in summer...?”
She didn’t stop.
Her words tumbled over one another without pause, a constant stream of half-finished stories and scattered thoughts. Maybe she truly hadn’t spoken to anyone in a month, or maybe this was just who she was.
“There’s water in front of you. Wash yourself there,” I said, cutting through the noise. “I’ll come back later.”
I gave her a light push forward, just enough for her to feel the water at her feet.
“Wait… can you help me?” she called after me as I turned to leave.
I glanced back, thinking she might need help with her balance or clothes, but she had already undressed. Completely.
Despite the grime clinging to her limbs, her figure was striking. Alluring, even. But whatever moment she might have hoped to create died instantly when I spotted the two corpses slumped behind her, barely a step from the water’s edge - grotesque things, ruining whatever illusion of charm she thought she was creating.
Is public nudity normal here? Maybe she was not trying to seduce me…
The thought crossed my mind as I turned away, rejecting her request with a simple, flat “No.”
I was done letting any part of me make decisions that wasn’t my brain.
Now that I’m stuck here, whether I like it or not, I should at least try using Crimson Rite.
I stepped toward the grotesque corpses and reluctantly activated the skill. The crimson diagram shimmered to life in front of my palm, and strands of green energy began to rise from the body. But even as they passed through the diagram, nothing formed in my hand, no gel-like mass, no essence to speak of.
I had seen this before, when Ninali failed to extract anything from a beast’s corpse. The energy had simply dispersed.
Their rank is probably too low.
I had expected that outcome, but I still repeated the process with the second corpse, holding onto a sliver of hope. The result was the same. I stared down at the two bodies, disgust curling in my throat. Useless. Not even worth harvesting. Then I turned away without another glance.
I made my way back to the chamber where the girl had been, stopping in front of the torch still burning on the wall. For a moment, I looked at it like it was the One Ring and I was Gollum. My hand closed around it fast, I wasn’t about to spend even a minute more in that place than I had to.
Outside, I searched for anything that could be used as fuel, but there was nothing of value. Just a few thin bushes scattered across the misty meadow, far too damp to burn properly, though they could serve as makeshift skewers.
I’ll have to roast the meat directly over the torch. Hopefully the heat will be enough.
I broke what branches I could and drove the torch into the ground, checking twice to make sure it wouldn’t topple over mid-cooking. Stripping the bark from the sticks with my greatsword was miserable work. I sliced my fingers more than once, and ruined every nearly-finished skewer at least a dozen times, but eventually I had enough to prepare a meal for two.
I opened the veilspace and pulled out the meat I’d harvested from the horse-like beast. Skinning the thigh hadn’t been difficult, though cutting it into shape had taken far longer than it should’ve. But after enough struggling, I managed to divide it into small, manageable cubes and held them over the torch’s flame. I’d kept the portions small on purpose - no need to aim for flavor or tenderness. This wasn’t about taste. I just needed a safe source of energy, nothing more.
It took longer than expected just to cook one stick, and I was about to start on another when I heard footsteps behind me. I didn’t turn. Instead, I shifted where I sat so that I’d be facing her directly. I wasn’t about to leave my back exposed to someone I didn’t trust.
“It smells nice,” she said, smiling as she wrung out her damp hair and tossed it over her shoulder.
When her face came fully into view, I froze.
The young woman before me looked like an entirely different person.
Her skin was clean, pale, and unblemished, glistening slightly from the lingering moisture on her body. She wore a fresh new dress, not a scrap of dirt on it, though the cut and design were identical to the one she had worn before. Only the condition had changed.
There’s no way she’s some village girl from outside the forest.
I already had my doubts about her story, but now there was no room left for assumptions. She had lied.
But even that wasn’t the most surprising part.
What caught my attention more than the change in her appearance were her ears. They looked normal, human.
Unless this is another illusion, that means humans really do exist in this world.
“Since you prepared the meal, I’ll contribute the drink,” she said suddenly, just before nearly sitting directly onto the torch, forcing me to catch her by the arm and pull her aside.
“Woops. Sorry,” she added with a grin as I guided her to a safer spot.
Then she extended her hand, and without drawing a single rune or diagram, a purple circle shimmered into existence beside her. She reached into it casually and pulled out a bottle filled with deep amber liquid.
“This is the alcohol my parents made, one of the last bottles actually. I strongly suggest you try it.”
She yanked the cork free with her teeth and took a long, confident swig before offering it to me.
“Try it. You’ll thank me later.”
I accepted the bottle, raised it to my lips, and tilted it just enough to let the liquid pour behind me.
There’s no way I’m drinking something you’ve already touched. I don’t trust anything or anyone in this place.
The thought was likely meant to strengthen my resolve. Because while she was smiling, she had casually adjusted her dress and exposed her thighs, stretching her legs in just the right way to pull focus.
“How did you survive a month without food or water?” I asked, needing to break the silence before my thoughts drifted somewhere they shouldn’t.
“Who told you I didn’t have food?” she answered, flashing a sheepish smile. “I’m a summoner. I kept calling smaller animals and ate those.”
It was too clean, too simple, and more than that, she had revealed her power far too easily, but I had no real argument. So I let it go.
“By the way,” she said as she rose to her feet, “I don’t think I properly thanked you.”
Then she dipped into a formal curtsey, the kind I’d only ever seen in films about nobility.
“My name is Elisabeth…”
She stopped, and I assumed the introduction was over. But as she straightened, I noticed something shift. The stitches across her eyes had begun to glow, a faint crimson light pulsing beneath the threads.
“I serve the Father of the Night and the Moon,” she continued, and with those words, something in the air changed.
Dark energy began to seep from her eyes. At first, it came in thin strands, but it thickened quickly, rising around her in slow coils before stretching outward toward me. The tendrils reached my skin and didn’t stop - they wrapped around me, tightening, pressing into my mind like invisible hands.
At first, I thought she was simply radiating power, but then I realized what she was doing.
She was trying to look inside my thoughts.
The pressure built fast, centered in my head, deep and invasive.
“Which god do you serve?”
**
A/N
Hope you enjoyed Elisabeth :3
